“We need to hire a safety person” is a beginning
A growing life-sciences company recognizes that its laboratories, equipment, and activities have become more complex. Leadership approves an Environmental, Health & Safety (EH&S) hire and expects the new person to “take care of safety.”
The hire may be essential. The assumption is the problem.
An EH&S professional can identify hazards, develop programs, advise on controls, and help the business understand its obligations. That person cannot, alone, determine what happens when an experiment is behind schedule, a facility needs investment, or a senior scientist dismisses a concern.
Hiring expertise does not transfer leadership’s responsibility for the conditions in which people work. Safety becomes a culture when the company’s everyday decisions reinforce it—not when one individual is assigned to police it.
The real policy is what happens under pressure
Imagine a team preparing a time-sensitive study when a concern arises about whether the workspace is appropriate for a new procedure. The written policy says to raise questions. The program leader says the milestone cannot move.
What happens next teaches the team more than the policy.
Does leadership support a pause and a qualified assessment? Does it provide an alternative path? Or does the person raising the issue become the obstacle everyone remembers?
Culture is built in these moments. The same is true when an executive follows laboratory access rules, when a manager makes time for training, or when a needed repair is funded before a new capability is celebrated.
OSHA’s management-leadership recommendations emphasize visible commitment, resources, and clear responsibilities. In a life-sciences business, that commitment must reach the scientific and operating decisions where risk is created.
Give EH&S influence—not sole ownership
A practical operating model separates specialist expertise from accountability for execution:
- The CEO and leadership team set expectations and resolve conflicts between scientific priorities, operating capacity, and safe execution.
- Scientific leaders and line managers own safe work within their teams, including supervision, readiness, and response to concerns.
- EH&S professionals bring technical judgment, coordinate programs, advise on applicable requirements, and have direct access to leadership when risks remain unresolved.
- Facilities, operations, procurement, and HR incorporate safety into the infrastructure, purchasing, staffing, and contractor decisions they control.
- Employees and contractors participate in identifying concerns and improving how work is performed.
Avoid the phrase “everyone owns safety” unless each important action has a named owner. Shared commitment is valuable; ambiguous responsibility leaves work undone.
Give the EH&S function an escalation path that does not depend on persuading the same manager whose deadline is under review. Bring it into planning early enough to influence the decision, not merely document it afterward.
Top-down accountability needs bottom-up participation
A leadership-driven culture is not a system in which executives write rules and scientists quietly comply. People doing the work often see the mismatch between a procedure and actual conditions first.
Ask technicians, researchers, facilities staff, and contractors where work becomes difficult, where shortcuts are tempting, and which controls do not function as intended. Include them in developing workable changes.
OSHA’s worker-participation recommendations call for meaningful involvement and reporting without retaliation. Make that practical: provide accessible reporting routes, acknowledge concerns, and explain what happened next.
Establish a clear company process for pausing potentially unsafe work, obtaining qualified review, and authorizing a safe restart. People need to know whom to contact and what to do—not just that they are “empowered.”
An unanswered report teaches silence. A thoughtful response, even when the assessment finds a different issue than expected, teaches that speaking up is worthwhile.
Celebrate the person who raises a potential risk
Do more than permit reporting. Thank people for raising concerns and visibly recognize the judgment involved in speaking up—especially when it interrupts an important experiment or challenges a familiar practice.
The concern does not have to become a confirmed hazard to deserve a respectful response. Recognize good-faith reporting, explain the assessment, and share what changed or why existing controls were found appropriate. When sharing examples, respect confidentiality and the reporter’s preference about being named.
Make these moments part of team meetings and leadership communications: “A colleague noticed a potential risk, we paused to understand it, and here is what we learned.” Celebrate prevention and learning, not just scientific milestones.
Avoid report-count contests or rewards tied to keeping incident numbers low. The goal is thoughtful observation and honest communication—not a competition or an incentive to stay quiet.
Understand job hazards early—not after work is underway
Life-sciences hazards vary with the actual work: biological materials, hazardous chemicals, compressed gases, cryogens, specialized equipment, maintenance activities, and waste streams can require different expertise and controls.
Before launching a new activity, have the people doing the work and appropriate specialists examine the task step by step. What could cause harm? Who else could be exposed? What controls are needed, how will their readiness be checked, and what conditions require a pause?
Include preparation, transfer, cleanup, maintenance, and waste handling—not just the experimental procedure. Capture the assessment in a usable job-hazard analysis or equivalent task-specific review. Complete it while the company can still change the method, equipment, layout, or staffing without having already committed to an unsafe approach.
Use changes in work as prompts for review. A new assay, larger volume, different material, unfamiliar instrument, additional shift, or move into new space may change the risk even when the headcount stays the same.
Do not treat training and personal protective equipment as substitutes for evaluating the work itself. OSHA’s hierarchy-of-controls discussion prioritizes eliminating or substituting hazards and engineering protections ahead of reliance on procedures and PPE.
The “environmental” part of EH&S also deserves attention. Have qualified personnel assess waste handling, storage, disposal, emissions, and applicable permits alongside employee protection. Requirements depend on the activities and location; a generic checklist is not a complete program.
The objective is to make the safer method the practical method. A procedure that assumes equipment, space, or staffing the company has not provided is not a reliable operating solution.
Training rigor means demonstrated readiness
A completed training module or signed attendance sheet is evidence of participation—not, by itself, evidence that someone can perform a task safely. Scientific experience also does not guarantee familiarity with a particular instrument, material, or site’s controls.
Build training around the hazards identified in the actual job. Explain why controls matter, demonstrate the method, and provide supervised practice appropriate to the risk. Before independent work, have a qualified person verify that the learner can apply the controls, recognize abnormal conditions, and explain when to stop and seek help.
Document the training scope, competency assessment, and any limits on authorized work. Revisit readiness when tasks, equipment, or hazards change, and use refresher training where required or where performance indicates a need. Include contractors and temporary staff according to their work and responsibilities.
Managers must provide time, suitable instruction, and access to competent supervision. Do not compress training to protect a milestone and then blame the employee for being unprepared. Training rigor is a management commitment, not merely a learning-system completion rate.
Measure the work of prevention—not just the absence of injury
A small company can go a long time without a reported injury and still have serious weaknesses. A quiet dashboard does not establish that risks are controlled.
Alongside incident information, review practical indicators such as:
- Whether significant concerns receive timely assessment.
- Whether corrective actions have accountable owners and effective closure.
- Whether new activities are reviewed before they begin.
- Whether people can demonstrate the task-specific practices they need.
- Whether recurring problems are being eliminated rather than repeatedly explained.
Interpret the numbers in context. More near-miss reports may indicate growing trust, not worsening performance. Faster closure is not an improvement if issues are marked complete without checking the result.
Avoid incentives that make an unblemished reporting record more valuable than surfacing a concern. Ask managers what they learned and changed, not simply how many days passed without an incident.
Scale the program with the business
An early-stage company may use qualified external specialists alongside a designated internal leader. A larger or more complex operation may need dedicated personnel and additional subject-matter expertise. Neither arrangement substitutes for engaged management.
Review the support model as the company adds laboratories, materials, contractors, sites, or manufacturing activities. Do not assume that a landlord, shared-lab operator, or service provider covers every interface.
Build a recurring leadership review around the few issues that need decisions: unresolved significant risks, readiness for planned changes, recurring failures, and resource needs. Keep routine administration with the appropriate owners.
Safety should be visible in how the business plans growth—not appear only after something goes wrong.
Operational takeaway: hire the expert, build the culture
Start by asking leaders and frontline employees the same three questions: Who can pause this work? Who resolves an unresolved safety concern? What happens when doing the work safely changes the schedule or budget?
If the answers differ, the gap is not simply another training course or an EH&S vacancy. It is the operating model.
Name an executive sponsor, clarify manager responsibilities, give EH&S an effective voice, and involve the people doing the work. Select a small number of important gaps, assign actions, and verify that the changes work in practice.
Make three expectations explicit: understand job hazards before work begins, verify readiness rather than just training attendance, and recognize people who call out potential risks. Review whether those expectations hold when schedules are tight—not only when conditions are easy.
Hire the expertise the business needs. Then make sure leadership’s behavior, resources, and decisions allow that expertise to succeed. A strong safety culture protects people and gives the science a more dependable foundation.
See this in practice
EH&S closeout and previous-site turnover formed part of this laboratory relocation from Steve Michel’s prior leadership experience.